REVIEW: OOTP 17

REVIEW: OOTP 17

Out of the Park Baseball 17 is a sports strategy game where you can bring your very own baseball team to success. You can play both against bots or real people.

Status: Released

Developer: Out of the Park Developments

Publisher: Out of the Park Developments

Genre: Baseball management simulation

Release date: 22 Mar, 2016

What is happening in the game:

You are a manager of a baseball team. You have to ensure that your team wins as much as possible by choosing the best prepared players and making the best moves in the game. If you know any other team management games or previous OOTP games, this one very similar to them, just with many improvements and added features.

Pros:

Clean Interface | I’m not a big baseball fan, but it was very clear what I had to do in the game. The menus look really nice and colourful, everything seems to be in order and the placement of all the options are really intuitive.

Ease of Use | As soon as I opened the game, it offered to help me with everything I might need to know in the game. Most things in the games are well explained, just in case you don’t know everything about baseball. You can open one of the official tutorials at any time if something is not clear enough in the game. I got a lot of useful information in this game since I’m not living in a country where baseball is very popular.

Bug-Free Gameplay | I have not experienced a single bug in this game. I always encounter at least something, a typo, something a bit misplaced … something. But not in this game. It’s stunning since there is so much content included in this game.

Performance | This year’s edition of Out of the Park Baseball finally has support for multi-core processors, which obviously means better performance on most computers. On my computer, the game was running without any performance drops at all times. Loading times were very short (sometimes, I wasn’t able to read the text on the loading screens, which made me a bit sad, I confess) and there weren’t many loading screens at all, so pretty much all the time dedicated to this game went to playing it, not waiting for it to load.

Multiplayer Support | I find it really impressive that you can also play this game with other players. I always thought that such games were meant to be more single player, but it seems like multiplayer support actually fits the genre perfectly. I mean, sports is about competing with others, isn’t it? If someone doesn’t believe that the game is not cheating and rigging the game, playing against real people is most certainly fair.

Supports Linux and MacOS | You can also play OOTP 17 on Linux and MacOS. I heard there are some issues with the Linux port, but it only occurs for some people.

Frequent Updates | Developers of this game often release updates that bring new content and fix bugs and glitches. It’s good to see a developer paying attention to their game, even though they release a new major version every year anyway.

Cons:

Pricing | I know some people are willing to pay a lot for such games, but I still think that $40 is a bit too much for a game like this. I know that a lot of work went into it, but I just don’t think that this price is justified. It’s fun, it has a lot of content, but just not enough for the price. GTA V is often discounted to a price below $40 and it’s well worth its money, which is something that I can’t say for this game. Sadly.

Replayability | I’m going to say something that a lot of people won’t agree with, but I’m going to say it anyway: the game is fun for some hours, but then it kind of lost its charm for me. I am not going to blame it on the game, it’s probably just because I’m not so used to baseball. So if you are into this kind of games and you know for yourself that you like

The final verdict:

The game is good, but the high price can be an obstacle when considering purchasing. If you have played any OOTP games before, you should know that this game is just like the old ones, but improved in many ways. If that is something you are willing to pay for, go for it. If you haven’t played any previous games, you should consider purchasing it when it gets discounted. It offers solid gameplay and it can be quite fun and challenging at moments. I know people who spent hundreds of hours into such game so if you’re one of such people, this might be a game for you.
Although the price is an issue, I’m going to recommend this game as every game gets discounted if you wait for a little. Also, OOTP is a well-made game and deserves to be supported.